William Yang: Life Lines
William Yang | William in scholar’s costume, 1984 (from ‘GoMA self-portrait’ series) 2008 | Collection: The artist
William Yang
William in scholar’s costume, 1984 (from ‘GoMA self-portrait’ series) 2008
Collection: The artist
William Yang: Life Lines
Photographer and performer William Yang has consistently recorded his life since the early 1970s, from his family history in far north Queensland to the overlapping artistic and gay scenes of his adopted home of Sydney, to his travels around Australia and to China. His works provide a unique chronicle of Australian cultural life, and offer rare insights into the experiences and stories of Australian–Chinese people.
Yang’s grandparents emigrated from southern China during the northern Australian gold rush of the 1880s. His parents met in Cairns and moved to Dimbulah on the Atherton Tableland, where Yang and his siblings grew up. Yang’s family is now scattered around Australia and across the world, and one of his ongoing projects has been to meet and photograph them, wherever they may be. He has travelled to China five times since 1989, visiting his ancestral village and photographing his experiences. These journeys, while constituting a return to Yang’s roots, also, as he says, 'tend to reinforce the fact that I’m Australian'.
For 'The China Project', Yang has produced two new works that respond to the Gallery’s architecture and reflect his interest in family and portraiture. The first, presented on the foyer wall, is a large collage of portraits of family members, interspersed with pictures of historical Chinese sites in Australia. This work, through the images of one extended family, reflects the diversity of the Chinese community and its integration into Australian society and landscape. The second, displayed in the foyer cabinet, features self-portraits that trace Yang’s life from early childhood to the present, with a particular focus upon his exploration of his Chinese heritage. Accompanying these photographs is a collection of personal items that enhance and extend this narrative of the artist’s life. While Yang’s use of photographs and objects to tell stories is individual and specific, he is always concerned with broader questions of place, history and belonging.
